


hey lifesaver

by statusquo_ergo



Category: Suits (TV)
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, circa s02e14-15
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-30
Updated: 2017-08-30
Packaged: 2018-12-21 18:00:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11949663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/statusquo_ergo/pseuds/statusquo_ergo
Summary: Prompt 32:Every year, on the anniversary of his father’s death, Harvey visits Gordon’s grave. Sharing a ceremonial drink with him is not the only thing he does on those occasions.





	hey lifesaver

It’s bad form to walk around the office with his nose buried in The Curated History of Litigation Regarding Gender Bias in the Workplace (as compiled by Michael James Ross). Mike knows this, mostly because it’s obvious.

It’s worse form to proofread said Curated History while he’s on the way to Harvey’s office to deliver it to him. Mike knows this, but he’s on a deadline, and still refining his time management skills. (And still smarting from his grandmother’s recent…passing, but he doesn’t think Harvey will appreciate that as an excuse.)

It’s unforgivable form to reach blindly for the door to Harvey’s office and literally walk into it when it won’t open under his hand.

“Motherf—”

Blinking deliriously for a moment, Mike focuses his attention enough to confirm that yes, the door is shut; yes, the office is empty; yes, the lights are off; no, Harvey’s briefcase isn’t in its usual spot by his desk chair.

Harvey did want this report finished today, didn’t he? Yeah, he absolutely did, he spent nearly five minutes lecturing Mike on the critical importance of getting it done as quickly as possible, “and I don’t mean by the end of the week, rookie, I didn’t hire your genius brain for nothing.”

Shit, did he miss the deadline? But, actually, no, Harvey didn’t demand it by an explicit time, or even an explicit _day._ Just, fast. Superhumanly fast. And considering the amount of shit he had to wade through to come up with the substantial amount of content he’s managed to return, Mike thinks twenty-seven hours is a pretty good turnaround, thank you very much.

“Donna,” he blurts out, wheeling around to face her cubicle and finding her already looking up at him warningly, resting her folded arms on her desk and leaning forward with just enough of a threat in her bearing to cut him off without needing to spell it out.

“Harvey will be in tomorrow,” she enunciates. “Whatever you need to give him, you can give it to him then.”

Biting his lip, Mike glances back over his shoulder, but the office is as empty the second time around as it was the first.

“He made a _really_ big deal about having it done today,” he fibs. “If I gave it to you, could you get it to him? Somehow?”

Donna’s brow lowers.

“Tomorrow.”

“Is there _any_ way I can get it to him?”

“Mike,” she snaps, so fiercely that he recoils with a bit of a flinch. Donna sighs through her teeth.

“No, there isn’t, because he’s in Boston,” she says, putting a great deal of effort into softening her tone. “His train doesn’t get back to the city until two twenty. Tomorrow morning.”

Boston? What could possibly have persuaded Harvey to take a day trip to Boston, of all places? Is his brother in trouble again, is his mother sick? But wouldn’t he tell Mike something like that, aren’t they close enough to share those kinds of things?

(Too soon?)

Mike steps forward and back, pivoting left and right in a fluster as he fumbles with the stack of papers in his arms, and Donna sighs again, focusing her gaze on the “H” key at the center of her keyboard.

“Today’s not a good day for Harvey,” she says as Mike stops flailing about. “And I’m trusting you with this information,” she implores, looking up at him with steel in her eyes, “because you’re very important to him, and I know you’ll be very careful with it.”

Mike nods immediately, freezing in place, and Donna purses her lips.

“It’s the fifth anniversary of his father’s death.”

Oh.

Oh, well.

That explains it.

Lowering his papers and tucking them under his arm, Mike furrows his brow and tries to remember the Greyhound schedule for buses from New York to Boston. There are a lot of them, departing between fifteen minutes and three and a half hours apart from one another, but depending on traffic, the ride takes anywhere from four to eight hours, or more, and Harvey is probably at his father’s grave but Mike doesn’t actually know where that is, specifically, and it’s not the sort of thing he can ask at the terminal, but he’s got to do _something,_ he can’t leave Harvey on his own to deal with—

“Mike.”

“Huh?”

Clasping her hands in front of her mouth, Donna sucks in a long breath and blows it out in a quick hiss as she comes to a resolution.

“Harvey wouldn’t want you to do anything reckless,” she says, blinking up at him. “And I can’t tell you which cemetery his father is buried at because I don’t know.”

Dropping his hands to his thighs, nearly dropping all his research in the process, Mike scowls up at the ceiling.

“Okay, thanks, Donna—”

“But for what it’s worth,” she cuts him off, “last year, when he got back into the city, the first thing he did was call Scottie.”

Mike bristles a little, even though he knows he has no real reason to be jealous. For her part, Donna gives him a pointed look before she turns back to her computer and begins typing.

“Now stop acting so delirious and get back to work.”

Averting his gaze, Mike drums his fingers on the report under his arm.

Harvey will be back in the city at two twenty; the drive back to his penthouse from Penn Station will be about fifteen minutes at that time of night.

Donna looks up at him covertly, and Mike clears his throat.

“Thanks, Donna.”

Nodding his dismissal, she ignores the way he awkwardly contorts himself to catch a glimpse of her desk clock on his way back toward the elevators.

It’s seven after eleven. Mike has fifteen hours and thirteen minutes to prove himself to be the best damn associate this firm has ever seen.

Back in the bullpen, he collapses into his desk chair, waking up his computer and glancing down at the lower righthand corner of the monitor.

Fifteen hours, nine minutes.

It’s gonna be a long day.

\---

The city always feels like an extra liminal space right before dawn.

Harvey isn’t unsettled so much as hypervigilant as he walks through the doors of Penn Station, more alert than a person ought to be after waking up at five AM for a six-forty train. A few weary passengers slog past him, dragging wheeled plastic suitcases up the stairs with a rhythmic _thump, thump, thump_ and looking around for signs pointing them to god knows where, and Harvey holds his head up high as though the daylilies and bleeding hearts swaying in the corrugated box balanced in his arms don’t make him look like an idiot.

At six thirty-one, the Northeast Regional 190 begins boarding on Track 6E.

Harvey is third in line down the escalator.

The station attendants loudly ask him, just as they did the couple before him, where he plans to disembark; “Boston,” he replies at every checkpoint, and they all wave him on past. “To the orange cone,” one attendant informs him distractedly, already looking to the next customer in line as though she knows he’s going to be trouble.

Harvey slips onto the train after the couple, sidling past as they dally in the corridor. Tourists, probably.

Moving to the rightmost window seat in row twelve, more or less the center of the car, Harvey sets his box down at his feet, the whiskey bottle inside clanking against the clay flowerpots. He watches the reflection of the other passengers filing in behind him, hoisting their duffel bags and suitcases onto the luggage racks overhead and shoving their faces into travel pillows as they sit, settling in for their varyingly long hauls. A grey-haired man across the aisle takes a copy of _Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban_ out of his backpack and opens it to the first chapter, and a woman in the next row up plugs a laptop into the wall and pulls up a movie with Chinese subtitles. Harvey thinks he recognizes the opening shots of _Blue Velvet_.

A cat begins to meow. Through the gap between the window and the back of his seat, Harvey watches a pair of disembodied arms in long green sleeves take a calico out of an animal carrier and set it down where it can look out the window, which seems to shut it up.

Harvey ought to take a nap.

The daylilies sway and the bleeding hearts quiver as the train rattles down the tracks, and he catches the scent of artificial coconut wafting down the aisle.

He ought to got some sleep.

The grey-haired man puts _Harry Potter_ down on the seat beside him and starts reading _Waiting for Godot_ instead.

He isn’t tired.

At seven forty-five, two minutes behind schedule, the train pulls into Stamford, which is the station after the station after Penn, and Harvey plugs his headphones into his iPhone, pulling up a playlist titled “Dad.” He’ll definitely be able to get through the whole thing before Boston.

Maybe twice if there’s a long layover.

\---

There isn’t a long layover.

The train speeds out of Windsor so fast that they make up the two minutes they lost in Stamford, pulling into Back Bay Station at eleven-oh-four on the dot, exactly according to schedule. Harvey lurks at the end of the corridor with his box held close to his chest, waiting for an operator to open the door; he nods a greeting and dismissal in one to a man who couldn’t care less and walks down the steep metal steps obnoxiously slowly rather than making any effort to hold onto the handrail.

All things being equal, the journey from the train station to Mount Hope Cemetery is a little over forty-five minutes. Harvey buys a CharlieTicket with enough money for a round trip on the Orange Line and hopes, as he does every year, not to run into his mother or his brother.

He’s not too concerned.

Harvey walks through the cemetery gates without flourish, except for the small amount of juggling he has to do to keep from dropping his box of flowers and liquor. Robert, who’s been a groundskeeper at Mount Hope since Harvey doesn’t know when, is digging a small hole underneath a large tree when Harvey passes by; he pauses his work for a moment, leaning on the handle of his shovel, and Harvey meets his gaze before he continues on his way.

Gordon’s grave is in the center plot, off to the north. The headstone with the passionflower along the left side.

The groundskeepers here do a good job of keeping the plots clean. Of course, Harvey notes with a scowl as he nears his father’s headstone, it would’ve been a little more professional of them to get rid of the passionflower after it started to die, or maybe if they’d bothered to tell him last year when he brought it that he should’ve done some more research before making such an impractical choice. Even when it was fresh and new, it wasn’t _that_ pretty, but it’s called _passionflower,_ for god’s sake. He thought his father would’ve appreciated it, being a musician and a romantic and all. A guy with a lot of _passion._

Harvey sets his box down next to the plot and puts his hands in his jeans pockets.

“Sorry about that,” he says, looking down at the rotting blossoms on the ground. There’s a lot of freshly turned dirt in the surrounding plots, more than last year. On one of them is a piece of cardstock with the words “I Love You” printed in simple script with a black Sharpie, which is…really nice.

Harvey sets his lips into a firm line and sighs out through his nose. Doing his best to ignore his sudden fatigue, he reaches into the box for the shot glasses tucked in there and sets one on top of the headstone, right at the flattest point in the center, before going back for the Silver Seal Macallan 18 wedged into the corner. Pouring them two fingers apiece, Harvey sets the bottle down by his feet and raises his glass.

The salutation is always silent. No need for a toast, no need for a speech; that’s not what this part of the ceremony is about.

Gordon understands.

The whiskey slides down Harvey’s throat in a single pull, and he tips his empty glass toward the headstone again before setting it alongside his father’s. Stepping deliberately, testing the softness of the ground before sinking to his knees, he reaches into the box for his trowel to start in on the damn passionflower, which doesn’t take nearly as long to pull it as he remembers it did to plant; some of the browned petals scatter as he tosses the flowers aside, and he scowls again.

“I did a dumb thing,” he says after a bit, clawing stray dirt out of the ground to ensure he’s gotten rid of all the roots. It’s still a little weird, this whole talking thing; there wasn’t much time for it when he first started this tradition back in 2008, dropping by to leave a clumsy bouquet of daffodils and roses as though that was somehow sufficient, but it’s become a part of it now, not quite routine but nearly so. It will be soon enough.

Harvey prods the sharp edge of the trowel against the dirt in the hole to ensure that he didn’t accidentally pack it down.

“Remember last year, I told you Jessica made me a senior partner?” he asks with a wry smile. “I wish you could’ve seen it; the mail room kid moving all the way up to the majors, I think you would’ve been proud.”

He lifts the daylilies out of the box and digs the trowel into their pot, skimming it around the edge to pry the plant out.

“But, see, the thing about senior partners is that they need to hire themselves associates.”

The potting soil falls into his waiting palm.

“I bet you can imagine how interested I was in that.” He laughs shortly, through his teeth, turning his wrist to inspect the flower from different angles. “I would’ve told you about it last year, but I’ll be honest with you, I didn’t think it was gonna last.”

Dropping the daylilies into the hole, Harvey puts his hand on top of the headstone, next to the shot glasses, and tries to get his bearings as his chest tightens.

It’s alright. This is just between the two of them.

“The kid’s a real fuck-up,” he says. “Kicked out of college, total pothead, and lemme tell you, that best friend of his…” He shakes his head, looking off down the row of graves sprawling out to the left, three of them new, one with a really nice message on a piece of cardstock. “Trevor Evans, what a piece of work.”

The daylilies don’t quite fill the hole they’re in, lilting about thirty degrees to the side. He’ll take care of it in a minute.

“He’s not important, though,” Harvey dismisses as he turns back to his father. “Trevor. Mike’s done with him.”

He smiles, feeling his eyes crinkle up at the corners.

“That’s his name, my guy; Mike. Mike Ross.”

My guy.

Harvey runs his hand down the right side of the cold granite headstone and rests it on the grass.

Yeah he is.

“Real do-gooder,” he says. “But a stubborn sonofabitch, keeps thinking he knows better than me. He’s always trying to go behind my back to do the right thing.”

The sun beats down, and he bites his tongue.

“You two would’ve got on great. I bet.”

Little late for that.

Harvey clears his throat and rights the daylilies, filling the hole in with some of the dirt he dug out of it.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he says to the flowers. “If Mike dropped out of college, how’d he get into Harvard Law? How’d he get his JD? Well, I’ll tell you what, the thing is: he didn’t.”

He finishes packing the hole and shifts around to face the left side of the headstone, sticking his trowel into the ground and hauling up a scoop of dirt and grass.

“But I’m telling you, Dad, this kid, he’s something else.” Another scoop, a bigger scoop. “He’s a walking encyclopedia, for one thing. He would’ve known not to plant that…that damn passionflower; I don’t know how he would’ve known it, but he would, and he would’ve warned me about it. He pulls all sorts of facts out of thin air, all the time, about every goddamn thing you can think of; he’s passed the LSATs more times than I can count, and you know what else he did, he passed the Bar when he was in college, just to prove he could, on some kind of stupid bet. And when I found him, he was a goddamn bike messenger.”

The hole is still too shallow for the bleeding hearts.

Harvey sits back and drops the trowel.

“He found me,” he corrects. “Crashed into my interview room with a briefcase full of weed and dumped it all over my floor. It was an accident, the briefcase busted open, it was a cheap piece of shit. But…”

He squints up at the sun, which he’s given to understand is terrible for his eyes, and takes a breath that fills his lungs to their limit.

“For some reason, I sat him down in the interview chair and I let him explain himself, I let him tell me his life story, and I’ll never forget it, Dad, he says to me, ‘I will work as hard as it takes to school those Harvard douches and become the best lawyer you’ve ever seen,’ and god, it was reckless, it was stupid, but there was just something about this kid…”

There’s always something. There always has been.

It’s passion.

It’s Mike.

They would’ve got on like a house on fire, Mike and Gordon would’ve. As if Mike hasn’t upended Harvey’s life enough all on his own, as if he needs a second.

Harvey shakes his head as his smile fades.

“He hasn’t had an easy life,” he admits. “His parents died in a car accident when he was eleven and he went to live with his grandmother, and she did the best she could for him, but she was an old woman when she took him in, you know, she… She did her best. She did everything she could.”

He looks down at the ground, at the base of the headstone, and his eyes go a little glassy.

“I met her a couple times,” he says. “I would’ve liked to get to know her better.”

Leaning over, he picks up the bleeding hearts and runs his finger along the edge of the potting soil.

“She died, pretty recently.”

He clears his throat as he gropes beside himself for the trowel.

“Mike took it hard.”

Well, obviously. What a dumb thing to point out.

It’s fine. His dad understands where he’s coming from.

“I tried to help him out,” he defends. “I tried to distract him, I gave him work to keep him busy, keep his mind off of it. And you know, it worked for a little while, but then he just…lost it, so I sent him home to clear his head.”

The bleeding hearts don’t come out of the pot as smoothly as the daylilies did, so Harvey puts them back on the ground.

“Don’t worry,” he says, “I swung by his place to check on him after work. And we uh, we smoked a joint together.”

This shouldn’t be so hard. It’s his dad; his dad will get it. Get _him._ It’s Mike, what’s not to get?

Besides all of that.

“Nothing else happened,” he hedges. “That night. But then after that, about…a week, so that’s about two weeks ago now. Let me—let me back up a little, see, a few months ago, Jessica found out that Mike doesn’t have a law license and she wasn’t…she wasn’t happy about it, and it took a little while but she— Well, I don’t know if she forgave him, or…me, but she’s keeping him around, she knows how valuable he is, and she knows what he could do to the firm if she kicked him out now, she knows when it’s in her best interest to back down.”

He coughs again, louder this time, and looks around to be sure that no one else is visiting any old friends today. Robert’s seen worse than whatever Harvey has to offer, he doesn’t care.

It’s fine. It’s all fine.

“There’s a whole lot of shit going on at the firm,” Harvey says vaguely, “and I didn’t come here to whine at you about my problems, but all of us could use somebody in our corner right now. You know. All of us, me and Mike and Jessica and Louis and…all of us. We’ve got some financial issues, this suit that’s getting pretty personal, there’s some threat of turnover, so…anyway.” He shrugs, as if all that is just another day at the office. Comes with the territory. Water under the bridge.

It is, it does.

“I said I’d leave if she got rid of him.”

You can see where this is headed.

And now, ladies and gentlemen, at your discretion, the grand finale.

“Mike and I…”

He shakes his head. It’s not so grand after all; he should’ve planned his words out better.

“Look, I know it doesn’t sound great from the outside, but we’ve known each other for a year now, longer than a year, and would you trust me that it’s been building up for awhile?”

Sunlight glints off the shot glasses and the Macallan bottle, and his dad doesn’t answer.

Harvey sighs.

“I’m not taking advantage of him,” he says. “Swear to god, I’m not. And he’s not taking advantage of me. We’re just… We click. We fit in a way I’ve never fit with anyone else. Not with Scottie, not with Zoe. Not with Donna.”

He picks at the ground, dirt and chlorophyll clinging underneath his fingernails.

“I don’t know if he’s ‘the one,’” he says satirically. “I know what you would say if I said that to your face, you’d tell me to stop overthinking it, go with my gut, take what’s in front of me while it’s there because I never know when it’ll be gone forever, but I’m telling you, Dad, there’s something different about this kid, and I don’t… I don’t know how to say it any clearer than that.”

Lifting the bleeding hearts, Harvey tips the pot into his hand and shakes it a little, catching the plant before it falls to the ground. It seems to have less potting soil than the daylilies, although that might be because most of it has spilled on his jeans and the hem of his sweater.

They look pretty good together, the two different flowers, if he does say so himself; no one will be able to tell just by looking that he’s nothing but a shitty amateur horticulturalist.

That’s probably not true. But nobody will say it to his face, at least.

He smirks down at his lap. Mike would.

(Sure sounds like you’re in it for the long haul, buddy.)

And so what if I am?

Harvey rubs his hands against his knees. It would’ve been nice to have this conversation with Gordon for real.

Back in the day.

Well, things were different then.

Standing, Harvey retrieves the whiskey and the shot glasses, placing them back in the box with the trowel and the little empty flowerpots and hoisting it into his arms. He turns back to the headstone with a solemn nod.

Thanks, Dad.

Harvey looks up into the bright blue sky as the sun shines down on his shoulders.

“I think you would’ve liked him.”

I know it.

Maybe next year.

Walking back toward the gates, Harvey nods to Robert, who waves his arm distractedly and keeps on digging. Harvey keeps on walking, all the way out onto the sidewalk, and nudges the gate closed with his heel.

This place has been pretty good to him, considering.

It’ll keep.

And then, next year.

\---

The sun has long since set and the associates have gradually begun to leave for the night by the time Mike finishes compiling as complete a history of Folsom Foods as anyone ever has, including a special color-coded section on gender discrimination with one carefully annotated report on a suit that seems to have been filed and then dropped and swept under the rug nine years ago for some reason that no one Mike could get in touch with wanted to talk about. Donna stopped by around quarter after eight, ostensibly to bid farewell for the evening but with the slightest crease in her brow, the barest narrowing of her eyes reminding him that he’s been trusted with something tremendously important and she expects him to follow through.

She did leave, though; he must have passed her test, whatever it was. So that’s something.

It’s nearly midnight.

Mike drops his head into his hands and sighs. It’ll be about forty minutes back to his place on his bike and probably about as long in a cab; more when he factors in the time it’ll take to flag one down this late.

Two hours and thirty-four minutes to go.

If he sets an alarm, he can sleep at his desk for awhile. Biking to Harvey’s will only take about fifteen minutes; he’ll leave at two, to be safe.

Mike types “online timer” into Google and sets the app for two hours and five minutes. Pushing his keyboard out of the way, he puts his arms down and lays his head on top, hoping to fall asleep quickly.

Harvey’s father died in 2007.

Mike ought to shut his eyes if he’s really serious about sleeping.

Harvey’s been visiting his grave, making this lonely pilgrimage for five years.

Mike sits up and puts his chin in his hands.

He’s willing to bet a lot of money that when Harvey phoned Scottie last year at two twenty in the morning, he wasn’t very forthcoming with an explanation for his sudden urges.

Mike would’ve gone out to Boston with him. If he’d asked.

Two hours and thirty-two minutes. He turns off the alarm.

Maybe next year.

\---

The ride back to New York is dreary the way that trains are in the later hours of night.

Only about eight people boarded with him in Boston, and even though the operator issued a stern warning that the train is going to be crowded and everyone needs to be sure to keep their belongings to themselves rather than taking up multiple seats, there are only five other people in Harvey’s car.

Harvey puts his box on the floor and pulls down the tray table on the seat back in front of him.

Penn Station isn’t the last stop on the route, but it’s a major hub, so it’ll be busy enough to wake him if he nods off. Either that, or one of the attendants will make sure he gets the hell out of there to make space for whatever. The alleged overcrowding. He ought to get some sleep, having been up since five AM for a six-forty train.

He dozes all the way to Bridgeport, where he wakes with a jolt for no apparent reason and then pulls up the “Dad” playlist on his iPhone; the ride from Connecticut back to New York takes twenty and a half songs.

After plodding mechanically from the platform to the station, the station to the exit, the exit to the street, Harvey spies Ray parked behind a couple of taxis. The ride back to his place takes—Harvey checks his watch—thirteen minutes, the sound of sloshing whiskey lulling him into a bit of a daze as he looks out the window at a plane flying over Queens.

He has an early day tomorrow.

Shouldn’t’ve taken that nap.

“Harvey?”

“Mm?”

Behind Ray, the lobby of Harvey’s building glows a welcoming beacon. Right, right; thirteen minutes.

“Goodnight.”

Ray waits for Harvey to make it all the way inside before he drives off. That’s nice.

The apartment sure is empty.

Harvey ought to go to bed, is what he should do; it’s late, he’s tired. He has to be at Pearson Hardman by eight tomorrow. Today, to be technical about it.

He won’t be able to sleep. He knows it; he feels it in his bones. Still, trying to be optimistic, he sheds his sweater, draping it over one of the wooden stools at the kitchen island.

He yawns as he takes the shot glasses out of the box and puts them in the dishwasher, and the Macallan in the back of the liquor cabinet beneath the television. Whimsically, or rather, because it’s there, he pours himself a highball of scotch, even though he isn’t sure he wants to drink it.

At the kitchen sink, he adds water to the glass and idly swirls it around.

His dad believed in love at first sight.

He and Mike would have gotten along so well.

Tomorrow, Harvey will tell Mike all about Boston. Maybe take him out for an early dinner or something. It’ll be fine. Mike will understand.

The idea of drinking the scotch and water puts a coppery taste in his mouth.

There’s a knock at the door.

Harvey puts the highball down and sighs. For god’s sake, it’s nearly two thirty in the morning. What could possibly be so important, so critical as to interrupt him _now?_ Is it Donna checking up on him for some godforsaken reason, some misplaced sense of authority or obligation? Is Mike here because Harvey told him to finish that research quickly, and he wasn’t around for him to deliver it during normal working hours? Is Mike so determined to prove himself that he needs to show Harvey that he got it done? Is that it?

Is he mad that Harvey didn’t tell him he would be out all day, or where he was going?

Didn’t he get the hint?

Knock knock knock knock knock.

Smacking his palms down on the counter, Harvey leaves his glass where it is and goes to answer.

There’s Mike.

Harvey rests his hand against the doorframe by his head and leans all his weight on it. Mike’s wearing his suit and carrying his stupid shoulder bag; shit, he’s been at work this whole time, doing his damnedest to cover for Harvey cutting out on him, all the while thinking he’d been abandoned for some selfish goddamn reason. Harvey can’t kick him out after that.

But fuck, whatever Mike has to say, he doesn’t think he can take it.

“Look, Mike,” Harvey drawls, “I’ll tell you what happened later, but I’m not interested in a lecture right now, so—”

“Good,” Mike interrupts with a little smile. “Because I’m not interested in giving one.”

Blinking slowly, Harvey tries to remember why the words sound so familiar.

_You stoned?_

Oh, Mike. You sentimental bastard.

Harvey shakes his head.

“How’d you know I’d be up?”

Mike averts his gaze. “Donna told me what time you were probably getting back.”

Of course she did. And probably everything else, too, god dammit.

Stepping away, Harvey waves Mike through the door and closes it behind him. Mike walks tentatively, wavering between the stylish black leather armchairs in the living room and the stylish brown wooden bar stools at the kitchen island and settling somewhere in between, putting his hands in his pockets and looking more uncomfortable than Harvey thinks he ought to in this place where he’s been so many times before, this place where he’ll always be welcome. Always belong.

After a few seconds’ pause, he shuffles his feet and places his hand stiffly on his bag’s shoulder strap.

“I, uh,” he mumbles. “I finished that research you wanted.”

“Mike,” Harvey says tersely. “Thank you, but it’s late, it’s been a long day, and I really don’t have time for this right now.”

“Then will you tell me what’s really going on?”

“What’s— Mike, you know what’s going on!” Harvey stabs his finger towards Mike’s face, flustered by the quick rejoinder. “I know Donna told you, don’t pretend she didn’t!”

“She told me that last year you got home at two in the morning, and the first thing you did was you called Scottie,” Mike retorts as though he’s been waiting all day to make the accusation. “And that tells me that you were feeling vulnerable and alone and I just, I thought that you’d know that you could come to me to help you, you can talk to me about this stuff, and you didn’t even tell me there was anything to talk _about!_ And I was _worried!_ ”

Harvey gapes inelegantly; he’s blank, empty, lost for words. He knew it, that Mike would feel this way. He did. Really. That’s why he’s going to fix it later, that’s why he has a plan, why he thought this through, why he’s going to take him out for an early dinner or something and. Everything will be fine.

Later, everything will be fine.

Now, Mike sags in on himself, his bag nearly slipping from his shoulders as they drop down and his chin falls to his chest, and Harvey raises his hand to wipe it across his mouth. It’s so late. This is the wrong time, can’t they wait until later?

“I’m sorry,” Mike says. “I…I knew you’d find out that Donna told me and I didn’t want you to think that I didn’t…” He rubs his palms against his eyes and when he laughs, it sounds like he wants to cry. “I didn’t want you to think I didn’t care.”

It’s late.

Harvey pinches the bridge of his nose. Colors are starting to blur, and he thinks he hears a bird chirping.

“This was a stupid idea,” Mike mutters as he hikes his bag back up on his shoulder. “I should’ve waited, I shouldn’t have—ambushed you like this, I’ve been working all day and you’re probably exhausted, and I, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have come here.”

Trying to make himself as small and inconsequential as possible, Mike clutches the strap of his bag and takes quick steps across the floor. Harvey throws his arm out and catches him around the chest as he tries to rush past.

They look beyond each other and wonder what the appropriate response to all of this is.

Harvey says: “I’m glad you did.”

Mike waits a beat and then leans sideways, dropping his head to Harvey’s shoulder.

He says: “I’m sorry.”

Sliding his hand up to Mike’s hair, Harvey turns just enough to press his lips to his forehead. Mike laughs again, a little bit, and it sounds less like crying, a little bit.

“I tried,” he murmurs.

“I know.”

“I wanted to help you.”

Harvey scratches his nails lightly against the back of Mike’s head.

“I know.”

Mike steps back enough to turn and face Harvey, looking cautiously into his eyes.

“Do you want me to go?”

Does he?

He should. This is Harvey’s family, Harvey’s ritual. Harvey’s problem. The only reason Donna even knows about it is that she was the one to field the news of his father’s passing in the first place, the one burdened with passing the message along to him.

This is Harvey’s loneliness.

But this is Mike.

Blinking away his thousand yard stare, Harvey shakes his head slowly.

“No,” he says. Mike cocks his head.

“You sure?”

Is he? Is he sure?

(Stop overthinking it.)

Dad always did have good advice to give when it really counted.

As Harvey slides his hand up over Mike’s shoulder, it occurs to him that while honoring the past, paying homage to his father is the right thing to do, and Gordon probably would have appreciated the passionflower even though it turned out to be a truly terrible idea, actually following some of his teachings and _living with_ passion instead of just paying lip service is probably the best way to find anything even vaguely resembling resolution or like, happiness, which is almost definitely what Gordon would want for him.

“Yeah,” he says.

Mike smiles, but it comes out awkward and tight the way that people’s mouths get when they’re trying not to yawn. When he’s finished staving it off, Harvey tugs him closer and kisses him right at the highest point of his cheekbone.

“I’m exhausted,” he confides as he draws back.

Crossing his arms over his chest, Mike tips his head down in a nodding sort of motion ( _I feel you_ ). God, the poor kid’s been thinking about this all day, doing all that work all by himself and just waiting for the moment he could show up on Harvey’s doorstep to offer some kind of comfort, some kind of salvation, and now it’s all turning out like _this._

Harvey wraps his arms around Mike’s shoulders and pulls him in close.

“I’m glad you’re here,” he murmurs. Mike clasps his hands behind Harvey’s back and burrows his face against the side of his neck.

For a minute there, Harvey thinks he’s fallen asleep where he stands, but then he feels Mike’s fingers clench in the back of his tee shirt and his arms tighten their embrace, and he knows that he hasn’t, but he wants to.

“Harvey?” Mike mumbles into his skin.

Harvey reaches up to cradle the back of his head.

“Yeah?”

Mike sighs.

“I love you.”

Everything feels sort of sparkly, and Harvey’s stomach has a nervous flutter in it that he hasn’t felt since the first time Jessica made him go to court and sit first chair on a case he wasn’t completely sure he was going to win. Stroking Mike’s hair down to the nape of his neck, Harvey urges his face up and kisses him exceptionally softly, hoping to ensure that neither of them shatters into too many pieces.

When they part, Mike goes out of his way to gather enough energy to smile again and stops as soon as he’s gotten his point across. Harvey has a powerful urge to go to bed in anticipation of waking up with Mike beside him, but it’ll be too difficult to walk and talk at the same time and there’s something he needs to be clear about first.

“Mike?”

“Yeah?”

Harvey runs his thumb under Mike’s eye as if to wipe away a tear, even though he isn’t crying and doesn’t seem like he plans to.

“Next year.”

Softer, cleaner, kinder than before, Mike smiles one last time, and Harvey’s been sleepwalking for god knows how long but he’s awake now and everything in front of him is violently beautiful and new, and this is it, this is the heart of what he’s been looking for all this time, here, now, imperfect and dear and good.

“Thanks, Harvey.”

Next year.

Harvey cups his hand around the back of Mike’s neck and guides him up the stairs toward the back of the apartment, toward the bedroom. Mike doesn’t have his own toothbrush here, or his own drawer—yet, doesn’t yet—but there’s a new toothbrush still in its plastic packaging in a cabinet in the bathroom that he can use, and if Mike wants to go home for a change of clothes tomorrow, Harvey will drive him there so he doesn’t have to be embarrassed, or he can borrow something of Harvey’s, if it fits well enough, or Harvey will buy him something new, if he wants.

Tonight, Mike lays his suit over the back of a chair in Harvey’s bedroom and climbs into Harvey’s bed in his undershirt and boxers. They lie facing each other and Mike closes his eyes as he shoves his hand under the pillow where he rests his head.

“Hey,” Harvey murmurs. Mike opens his eyes, just barely, humming a soft noise that makes it sound like he’s about to start singing a ballad and makes Harvey laugh quietly.

“I think he would’ve liked you.”

Mike closes his eyes again, and Harvey’s concerned he didn’t hear him until Mike shuffles across the mattress and drags Harvey’s arm over his shoulders.

Fair enough.

As Harvey begins to drift off, he vaguely remembers that he forgot to set his alarm to wake up in time for work tomorrow morning.

Whoops.

**Author's Note:**

> [This](http://www.timetables.org/full.php?group=20081027&item=0042) is the outbound train schedule Harvey followed in 2008 (taking the Keystone Service 644 at 12:15 PM) and [this](http://www.timetables.org/full.php?group=20081027&item=0037) is the one he followed for the return trip (taking the Northeast Regional 67 at 9:45 PM); [this](http://www.timetables.org/newpdf/NatT01_20120507_2012_Spring_Summer.pdf) is the schedule he follows in 2012 (taking the Northeast Regional 190 at 6:40 AM to Boston and the Northeast Regional 67 at 9:30 PM back to New York).
> 
> In “[Rewind](http://screencapped.net/tv/suits/thumbnails.php?album=20&page=33)” (s02e08), the alcohol Harvey takes to his father’s grave for their drink is Macallan whiskey; I can’t make out what year it is (13, 15, or 18), but apparently Macallan 18 is pretty famous? I’m not a whiskey connoisseur, but most people sure do seem to think it’s pretty high-end stuff.
> 
> [Daylilies](https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/ornamental/bulbs/daylily/growing-daylilies.htm) and [bleeding hearts](https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/ornamental/flowers/bleeding-heart/bleeding-heart-care.htm) are both good graveside planters, but they’re not necessarily great to plant side by side. Harvey is still learning about this whole landscaping thing.
> 
> The exact timeline for the events of Season 2 is unclear, but from what I can gather, three-ish weeks after “High Noon” (s02e10) would place this event chronologically where I intend it to take place, more or less; i.e., between “He’s Back” (s02e14) and “Normandy” (s02e15).
> 
> The dialogue Harvey and Mike’s familiar exchange is based on (“You stoned?” “Yep. And I’m not interested in a lecture, so—” “Good. Because I’m not interested in giving one.”) is lifted verbatim from “[High Noon](http://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/view_episode_scripts.php?tv-show=suits&episode=s02e10)” (s02e10).
> 
> Title from “Lifesaver” (2013) by Sunrise Avenue.
> 
> Feel free to say hi on [tumblr](http://statusquoergo.tumblr.com)!


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